Thick and Thin
by Mad Poetess
Summary: Angel/Spike/Xander. What does it take to make things work out? From angst, to taking the piss, to putting it all together. M/M slash, non-explicit sex.
1. Dangerously Thin: Angel

Disclaimer: Joss owns all. I own four cats, half a house, and a dyspeptic Chevy Caprice. Please don't sue -- you wouldn't want any of them. 

Spoilers: If it isn't obvious from context, and I hope it is, this trilogy is set between 'Restless' and 'Out of My Mind' -- though a few Buffy season 4 events were obviously affected by the AU.

Notes: Inspired by a poem of [James Walkwithwind's][1], called [A Thousand Dreams To Be Had][2].

**Dangerously Thin**

He came to my bed on Memorial Day. What that was about, I don't know, unless he just decided to get the hell out of Sunnydale to avoid the parade traffic and the barbecue smells, and the happy families picnicking into the dusk, within easy reach of his useless fangs. I'll never know. As if I could ask him. As if he'd tell me.

How he found me, in a rented room on Fifteenth Street, that I don't need to ask. He just closes his eyes, spins around, and says "Where's the person I could annoy the most on the face of this whole godforsaken planet?" Ends up pointing at me, and follows his nose. It's an acquired talent. If he'd had it when I left the first time, would I be here now?

So I got home, or, I should say, I got *back*, to my room late in the evening, and there he was. Curled up naked under the covers, that shock of electric hair flaring against the dark pillowcases. A little breaking and entering to round off a long day of travel, strip off, and then a snooze in my bed. No shame, no guilt, no handkerchief tied around the doorknob. Just Spike. And I refuse to say that I was glad to see him. I have my stoic, mysterious dignity to maintain.

He stirred as I grumbled my way in the door, sitting up and blinking at me. With his hair sticking up in little soft pieces that aren't even real spikes, not without a decent hair-gel, and sleep still haunting his eyes, he looks about seventeen. Not even the twenty-something he was when I made him into what I am. Into what I was. Into what he was. Certainly not like someone past his century mark and still pissing and spitting.

I shrugged off my coat and walked over to him. Didn't say a word. What words were there? Witty comic-book banter is for when you're beating hell out of Spike in an underground car park, or torturing each other with hot pokers. When he's in your bed, there isn't much to say. He said it anyway, with a wry twist of his lip.

"Fucked up again." And that's all I'd get out of him, I knew, as he turned on his side and faced the empty half of my bed. Looking away from me at whatever it is Spike sees. With the sheets slipping down to his hip, his pale skin made a shocking contrast to the wine-red satin. Which is, after all, why any vampire buys dark sexy sheets, but Spike's even paler than I am. 

And thin. I could just about count his ribs. Boy doesn't eat, I thought insanely, as if I was the long-dead father he wouldn't ever see again. Of course he doesn't eat. He's got a little microchip in his head that puts him though an electric replay of all the pain I've ever given him, if he so much as gnashes his teeth at a human. Like me, he drinks from a bag, from a cup. Like me. 

Unlike me, he eats human food on a whim, craving chocolate chip cookies or McDonald's french fries, for all the good the vanishing nutrients would do him. I, who want to be human, and might, someday, won't touch their food. He, who swears he's as evil as ever, loves and fucks and watches soap operas, and eats their food, and he's thin as a rail. All stretched muscle and jutting bone. As if he'd break in half if I sat down next to him and took him in my arms. Which, after silently taking off every stitch I was wearing, I did.

He bent his head, not in submission, but denial, not letting me have what was in his mind, what was in his heart, there in his eyes where I could always find it, once. He hid his face from me, but put his forehead against my chest, and just lay there. Taking what I owed him. What I'll always owe him.

In the morning, if he was there at all, it would be as if this hadn't happened. He might stay for a few hours, to torment me, laugh at my hair-care products, complain about the lack of food. Provoke me into a fight, so he could be sure as he left that I really am still the asshole I've always been to him. Those were the better times. More likely I would wake alone.

I don't know why I feel so much bigger than him, as if I could shield him from the world he keeps running headlong at, stage-diving into his usual stupidity and waiting for the crowd to kick him to the ground. I don't know why he comes to me, when he hates me with every fiber of his demonic being, but he does. Nights, just random nights, when whatever he's been doing has bitten him on the ass again, he's here. Taking what I'll always give, because it's his right. I owe it to him. If I tried to claim my rights as his Sire, he'd spit in my face. I don't try. Don't deserve them, couldn't master him anymore if I had a whip and a chair, let alone just my own voice. I know it, he knows it, and when we fight, he's cocky with the knowledge. 

But there he was in my arms, in the spring, and he let me give him what comfort I could. What comfort, for some reason, only I could give him. He let me touch him silently, run my fingers along the deep hollows of his cheeks, whisper names at him that belonged to someone he wasn't, anymore. He touched me with a selfish need, a child hungry for attention, and then became for a moment the heart-shy virgin I had taken to my bed so long ago. My child is a predator, tightly wound, full of heat and light and darkness, and he could have any woman or man he so much as twitched his lip towards, except the two he wanted most. I've seen that Spike. I've loved him, as I've loved everything else he's ever been. But that Spike would never come to me. That Spike leaves in the morning, and I'll never be able to make love to him, because he hates me, and he owes me nothing.

I take what I can get, and when he's a child in my arms, at least it's still him, still me. Even though in the morning, it won't have happened, even though he's on his way in that laughable blacked-out car of his, back to Sunnydale, to whatever he's planning now. To whoever he's found down there, who can, maybe, give him everything but arms strong enough to keep him warm. When he finds that, if he finds that, I'll lose even this. The demon in me, strangely, wants that for him. It's the human who selfishly hopes he'll be back.

I took what I could get, that night, and he allowed me to protect him, from the world and from himself. With the lights out, he let me put my mouth on him, let me bury myself in him. Let me know at that moment that he needed me, wanted me, with the understanding sizzling in the air between us that tomorrow, he would be Spike, the fangless wonder who could still kill demons, and I would be the mousse-brained poof, and if we saw each other, we would play the game of teeth and claws.

When it was over, I waited for him to fall asleep. The only time I have to treasure him is then, in the still-dark early morning, when he's sleeping in my arms. I fought sleep, as I do every time, knowing he might be gone when I awoke, or still there, but more my enemy than ever. I held him, and brushed his hair with my fingers, and said the things I would never say if he were awake enough to understand me. That I'm a selfish bastard, for letting him come to me, for joying in it as much as I do. That each time I twist his face to look into his eyes as I'm making love to him, I'm one step closer to the hair's-breadth line that would, if I crossed it, turn me back into the monster who tortured so many of the people I love. Him the most of all. 

I held him, touching the knobs of his spine, the sharp jut of his chin under my hand, and felt, again, that he would break. Just like that line, he's dangerously thin, and yet I risk it, every time, for what he's willing to let me be. His lover, for a moment or two, on a spring night in L.A., in the dark.

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=directory-authorProfile&userid=97320
   [2]: http://www.jbx.com/~boethius/forged/1000dreams.html



	2. Thick-Headed: Spike

Disclaimer: Joss owns all. I own four cats, half a house, and a dyspeptic Chevy Caprice. Please don't sue -- you wouldn't want any of them. 

Spoilers: If it isn't obvious from context, and I hope it is, this trilogy is set between 'Restless' and 'Out of My Mind' -- though a few Buffy season 4 events were obviously affected by the AU.

Notes: Inspired by a poem of [James Walkwithwind's][1], called [A Thousand Dreams To Be Had][2].

**Thick-Headed**

He doesn't get it. Bloody great moron never has, and he never will. Least not on his own, and damn if *I'm* gonna tell him. Not so long as I can wind him up over it, so I'm thinkin' another few centuries, at least. Then I'll have to start seriously looking for something new to pick at. Like the way his coat blows in the wind when he walks, like he's fuckin' Wyatt Earp. Ninety degrees in this town on a Monday night, not a breath of air movin' on the street, and here comes the Dark Avenger, stridin' down the pavement with those coattails flapping like angel wings. Where the hell is that wind coming from? I'd say bad Mexican food, but the bugger doesn't eat. 

He's moved again, into a comfy little rathole in a truly stinking neighbourhood; somebody blew up his old place. I wasn't that keen on the interior decorating myself, but I would've gone with arson, not high explosives. To each his own, I guess. Of course he's gone and filled the new flat with the same poncy shit. Why expect anything different? Rimbaud, Matisse, great honking sculpture of Perseus and the Medusa. Bloody red satin sheets so he can show off his "I'm a finely-sculpted marble god" body to best advantage. To who? Me? Please. As if I didn't know by now he's a huge, brainless, amazingly shaggable Irish potato... Who else is he expecting? His little blonde tart? (The one that isn't me, I mean. The one with the bad root job.) She's a bit busy at the moment, ridin' the soldier-boy into the ground.

Found him the easy way--let my fingers do the walkin'. Honestly. You'd think after two-hundred-odd years he'd have grown a cerebral cortex or something, and not let his little secretary chickadee fix him up with a *listed* phone. How many people in L.A. *officially* go by "Angel," no-last-name? Two, actually, but the other one was a transvestite down on Fourth Street, with five-o-clock shadow and damned impressive legs. So I picked the poof's sorry excuse for a deadbolt, let myself in, and started lookin' around for the good stuff. He has this unbelievable collection of Victorian porn. Not the trash they were selling down behind the chip shop when I was an impressionable young lad, but the real thing. The sort of tasty, extra-crispy stuff Oscar Wilde and his chums were tradin' round in their glory days. Got bored looking for it, though, and started watchin' out the window. 

And there he was, coattails flying, weight of the bloody world on his shoulders. Hair only a mother could love, and that soddin' soul just sitting there, riding behind his eyes like a big black cloud of kick-me-when-I'm-down. Ponce. Guilty, soulful, basset hound of an excuse for a vamp. Mine. Wouldn't do to let him see me watching, though, so I shucked down to nothing, and crawled into his friggin' Lestat-show of a bed. Did my best to fake sleep. With him around? Ha. Not bloody likely.

He saw me the minute he walked in the door. He always does, and he's never surprised. One day I'll do something that really blows his tiny mind, like bring 'im roses and valentine candy. Anything for a laugh. But he needs predictability, and, for now, I give him what he needs. He gives me what I need. We never talk about it. What, honesty? Between the two of us? Why break a century-old tradition? But something. He always needs something, to tell him I need him. Make his little hero-gig complete. So I give him words. Just a few. As if they mean more than me being here in the first place.

"Fucked up again." And I did, didn't I. Thought I'd throw in with the gigantic patchwork pillock, who said he'd get this piece of American-made cyber-trash out of my head if I helped him do over the Slayer. Always up for that. Only, see, in all the fun of messing with her friends' heads to get 'em separated from her, I forgot that, just like the big old slab of meat next to me, when somebody loves her, they do it up right. The kids followed her down into that mad-scientist's wet dream, and almost didn't come out. And that wasn't the plan. Not for the boy, anyway. So now he hates me, not 'cos I almost got him killed, not 'cos I saved his human-puppy hide three times on the way back out of there, but because he thought I was playin' with his heart. Where the hell have I heard *that* before? So, fucked up again.

Let the fairy-queen crawl into bed with me. Pushed my face up against his Sherman tank of a chest and just... stayed there. Sometimes I need that. Need him. Need somebody bigger and stronger and *not* tryin' to kick my arse all over the ring, sure, but just need *him*, mostly. My Sire. To be his boy again. He knows, the great Saint Angelus, vampiric martyr, and he *lives* for it. As much as a dead bugger can live, anyway. He's big and strong and he can put his arms round me and make it all go away for a while, and he loves it.

He can't take that I'm so much like those warm-blooded cattle on the street below. That I kick against the pricks, that I could wipe the floor with him at Street Fighter even if he can tear bloody hell out of me in the real world. That I eat fast food and watch "Passions." It's all too human for him, and he doesn't think he deserves that. That's what it's all about, really. Doesn't think he deserves any of it. Can't ever be simple with him: eat because it tastes good, show up in his bed because I still love him. Can't wrap his stone-age mind around it all.

So, for now, I give him what he needs: to know that I need him, and not be allowed to crow about it. I leave in the morning, every so often, though I'd love to stay, make him breakfast, just to cram some toast and sausage down his throat and remind him that he's still whatever passes for alive in this twisted-up world. I leave in the night, most times, 'cos I can't face watching him watch me go.

Dunno when I realized he needs me to protect him. From himself, most of all. He thinks 'cos he's got shoulders the size of Galway that he can take it all on. Just pile on the guilt, and the honor, and the oh-God-what-have-I-done bollocks until he's kneeling on the ground, and then maybe it'll make up for everything he's done to the whole great wide world. Angel did everything. Angel sold out Christ for thirty pieces of silver, Angel fucked the Slayer and took Dru from me, Angel called the networks and got 'em to cancel 'My So-Called Life." He wallows in "sorry," but forgiveness? Scarpers off in the opposite direction with his coat over his head, if anybody ever tries to tell him he should bloody get over it. He's an infant the size of a rugby player, and he needs somebody to take care of, so he doesn't have to admit he needs somebody to take care of *him*.

And I need somebody to take care of me. It's bloody easy to admit, but it would make him too happy. Then the *really* twisted-up bugger might come back, and somehow I've found I *like* this version. Tortured dark soul and all. Because he loves me. For him, I don't tell him I love him back. To feed his need to be hated, I scratch and howl and have pissin'-at-the-moon contests with him when we meet in public. To feed his need to be loved, I snuggled up to him on a Monday night in May, and let him hold me. Went a little wild and begged him to take me like the daft child I was when we first met, begged with my hands, begged with my mouth, but never with my eyes. Because he could always read me, and it would shatter his little black-clad world if he knew how much I care about him.

I gave him what I could, in the dark. It wasn't everything. He's not my soddin' everything, and it's the only way I can walk through the night without stopping to pound my head against every tombstone I come across. Look at Dru-- she let the bastard be her everything, and she's off chasing anything that'll beat and scratch at her enough to make her believe it's him. The other him. I've got somebody else. Found me a boy of my own, with worse dress-sense than Angel's, and come Tuesday morning, I knew I'd be off back to the 'dale, to see if I could pick up the pieces and fix it all. Found somebody *I* can take care of, who, when he isn't laughing at *my* limited wardrobe, or hating my undead guts, makes me feel like it might all be worthwhile, after all. If it makes me as poncy as my Sire, so be it. At least I don't keep Vidal Sassoon in business.

The sod thought I fell asleep, when we were done. He's always believed I can't hear him. When he tells me he's sorry. That he loves me. That he'd give anything not to have done what he's done. That he doesn't deserve me. Moron. Hell, it's the best time I have with him. Better than throwin' down in the street, better than takin' the piss on his hair or his clothes or his do-gooding human friends. Just him and me, feeling his words on my neck. 

He's never understood that I still want him, even in the morning. That you're still allowed to love, when you're dead, and it's more sweet than sin, if you love more than one. Someday I'll tell him, when he's just brassed-off enough that it won't send him over the edge into Happydale. 'Til then, I get the dark and the sheets and him wrapped around me, and he gets to believe that I hate him. He's a thick-headed git, that way, but he's mine.

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=directory-authorProfile&userid=97320
   [2]: http://www.jbx.com/~boethius/forged/1000dreams.html



	3. Stuck In the Middle: Xander

Disclaimer: Joss owns all. I own four cats, half a house, and a dyspeptic Chevy Caprice. Please don't sue -- you wouldn't want any of them. 

Spoilers: If it isn't obvious from context, and I hope it is, this trilogy is set between 'Restless' and 'Out of My Mind' -- though a few Buffy season 4 events were obviously affected by the AU.

Notes: Inspired by a poem of [James Walkwithwind's][1], called [A Thousand Dreams To Be Had][2].

**Stuck In the Middle**

I don't get why I'm in the middle. It ought to be Spike. It's Spike who drove that piece of shit car of his back and forth between Sunnydale and L.A. for months, and thought I didn't know where he'd been. Thought I couldn't smell hairgel and Drakkar Noir on him when he picked the lock on my basement door, like he always did, and slid back into that ugly red barcalounger they decided was hideous enough to throw down here for me to use. He never would just come to bed; he had to sit and stare at me a while, wait until I opened my eyes and acknowledged that he was there, and gave him permission. Spike, who never asks permission for anything, wouldn't come within a foot of the crappy fold-out couch unless I told him he could.

The Tuesday after Memorial Day, he showed back up, and I waited a long time to open my eyes, after I heard the lockpick turning the tumblers in the new deadbolt, after I heard the tiny squeaks as he came down the stairs. It had been two weeks since we came up from the Initiative base and I looked around for him, to tell him it was okay, that I forgave him-- and he was gone. The others were relieved; they didn't have to deal with him, didn't have to deal with me still being with him. I had nightmares. What if he hadn't made it out? The last time I saw him he was pulling some hairy, toothy son-of-a-bitch off me, and then he ran out into the crowd of monsters again, with that duster snapping behind him like he thought he was Angel or something. Just a flash of neon blond hair in the mosh-pit of bobbing heads and flying fists, and I couldn't see him anymore.

So I waited around the basement, as the gang came around less and less, getting on with their own lives, and I stared at the walls. The ones he'd covered with his posters, since I've got no taste, according to him. Sex Pistols and horror movie ads and that disgusting Spitting Image one of Gary Glitter. Looks like a Muppet version of Elvis if somebody barfed rhinestones and sequins all over him. It's an ad for BBC Radio Four that he ripped off from an Underground station sometime while I was in middle school, and no, Spike doesn't make me feel like jailbait. Not at all. He put up a map of the Tube, too, all coordinated in pretty colors. Never been outside California except for one trip to visit the grandparents in Cleveland, but I'll bet you if you dropped me in London, I could find my way from Cockfosters to Hatton Cross, wherever the hell they are besides on the Piccadilly Line, after staring at that poster every time Spike took off for L.A, and for two weeks straight at the end of May.

When I heard that metal scrape in the lock, I thought I was imagining things. Or maybe my dad was just a little less drunk than usual, and decided he was gonna try to get reacquainted, since the black DeSoto hadn't been parked in back for a while. But even Dad's not that stupid, not since Spike found out. Rammed him up against the wall with his hands around Dad's throat, fuck the chip, fuck everything, and Dad was unconscious before he saw Spike hit the floor. He never saw me drag Spike back downstairs and put him in the bed, and neither of them saw me cry, thank God. Dad never did touch me again, hadn't even looked me straight in the eye since then, and it wasn't him. I kept my eyes closed, and the movements were too quiet to be anybody but Spike, and there wasn't any breathing, just the little creak of that chair as he sat down in it, and I finally opened my eyes.

Damn if he didn't look even skinnier than he did before he left. And a little scared, but happy, too, those quirky lips caught between a frown and a smile, the way he always was when he got back from Angel's. Because being with Angel made everything okay for a while, and I ought to be jealous, but I'm not. Ought to hate Angel for his pretty hair and his prizefighter's body and how he always seems to have been where I wanted to be before I got there-- but I can't. There's Spike between us, and a hundred years of history between them, and that's why Spike should be in the middle, and I don't know why it's me. 

Maybe it's that I knew Angel before I knew Spike-- but back then I was too busy hating him for having what I thought I wanted, to ever look straight at him and see that he was doing what he always does: taking care of someone I loved. Spike won't let you not see, though-- he opens his big smartass mouth and points everything out and you feel like a complete moron, and then if you're lucky, if you're me, he takes you in his arms and says you're cute when you're a dumbass. And so I couldn't hate Angel, had to love him for loving Spike. Have to love him for sending Spike back to me, even if he didn't know it was me then, to sit in my chair and wait for me to nod at him and give him permission to talk.

"Fucked up again." And he always underestimates himself, or maybe just how much I love him, because like usual, he thought I cared. Thought anything he'd done with Adam mattered more than the night that Anya walked away from Sunnydale and demon-hunting commandos and me, and I'd been curled up in my bed trying not to cry, trying not to think about the next time Dad came down those stairs, and Spike... Spike had gotten up out of that damn red chair, slipped those ropes that he could've slipped any time, and come and knelt next to the bed. Stared at me for a while, and asked, very quietly, if he could get in. I thought he was nuts, thought he was playing with my head-- and there wasn't much left to play with at that point-- but I didn't care anymore, so I shrugged and said whatever. And there he was, Spike, thin and cool and he slipped his arms around me and said he understood, and he never laughed when I turned around and fell apart and snotted all over his shirt. His arms felt like the strongest things in the world that night, and ever since.

So I shook my head in May, and pulled back the blanket, and told him to get the hell into the bed, _now_. Stupid prick. He sees everybody else's ugly little secrets, knows just what they're feeling and can use it to twist them up like those bendy pink dolls with the wires in their arms and legs-- but he can never see in the mirror to figure out that he's better than he lets himself believe he is. He can walk around like he's the devil's gift to anything with a working crotch, but he's totally clueless to that fact that at least two people in the world wouldn't care if he gained a hundred pounds, learned the two-step and changed his name to Bubba. Love him so much that nothing else matters. Not even the smell of Angel on him when he came back into my bed, and held me, and told me he was sorry, over and over and over.

He thinks I'm a kid, he thinks I don't know what he is or was, or I'd kick him out of my life so fast his ass would throw off sparks when it hit the sidewalk. I know. I'm not a complete dumbass. I've seen him kill and I've read the books Giles thinks he hid from me when they all found out about me and Spike. And it doesn't fucking matter. He loves me, no matter what he is, no matter what he's done or who he's killed. Somewhere in the middle of the spring, when he was holding me for the umpteenth time and kissing me and telling me I was his beautiful boy, or maybe later when we were playing video games and eating ice cream, I fell in love with him, too. So it's too late for all that heroic Angel shit, even if Spike could pull it off. Every time he came back, he whispered, real quiet so nobody but me would hear him being all poofy, that he wished he wasn't too selfish to stay away. Every time he sat down in that red chair, I thanked God that he was.

The summer passed, and Spike stayed, and the gang slowly stopped coming at all, once they realized that he was back. It wasn't that they didn't care, or refused to deal, it was just...we'd grown too far apart. They don't need me anymore. Anybody could've done my part in that First Slayer spell. Anybody. Oz, Tara. And with both of them around, Willow has enough to worry about. And I... I needed them to be people they aren't anymore, maybe never were. People who could accept everything, including Spike. (Right, I know, the way I did when Angel was with Buffy. So I'm a hypocrite.) None of them could, quite, though they tried in their own ways. Willow understood the most, but she was scared, and I couldn't take her looking at me like that. Knowing that someday, sooner or later, Spike would ask, and I'd say yes, and we'd come to her for that spell.

And early in September, Riley went kaboom. Only not so loud. Sick. Bad sick. And there was this Initiative doctor, and there was Buffy knocking at my door when I hadn't seen her in over a month. Twisting her hands in front of her and asking if I wanted to bring Spike along. It isn't that they don't love me, you see. It was never that. But his face. Spike's face when they told us that chip was too far in to ever come out. I don't know what was worse: the shock and disappointment, like everything he was had been ripped away, like somebody'd just run over his favorite puppy--- or squished his favorite spider, I guess, in Spike's case-- or the relief. Because he'd never be able to hurt me or anybody I care about, even accidentally.

And that night, he took off. Got into the Fireflite and sped off down the highway, just like I knew he would. Only this time, I didn't wait in the basement for him to come back. Just stood up, took down the posters and rolled them up, and shoved them into the back of my rustbucket, where everything else besides Spike that I give a shit about was already packed. Had been since that morning. Left the door unlocked behind me, and tore out after him. He had a fifteen minute lead on me, and a speeding ticket later, it was up to half an hour, but it didn't really matter. I knew where he was going. After nineteen years of studious application, I've actually figured out how to use the phone book.

Pulled up to this big old hotel where Deadboy's moved, and the front door was unlocked. Walked right past my ex-girlfriend and my ex-rival with my best doofus smile ever, didn't say a word, and followed the smell of menthol and hairgel. There's still a little bit of hyena in here. Just a little. There they were, in a room at the end of the hall, and Spike thinks _I_ have no taste in decorating? It looked like something out of Martha Stewart's Unliving. The two of them, in this big huge dark wooden bed all covered with black satin. Like a newspaper photograph, white skin on black sheets, dark hair on a silver pillowcase, blond hair on a black one. And this space. This space between them, right down the middle. The covers pulled back, and they were both naked, and you could see they'd fit together like nothing was ever meant to be between them, but there was this space, complete with a third pillow, a white one, and they both looked at me. Waiting.

So here I am. They need me, and I never expected that. Back in Sunnydale, they don't need a guy with a fake soldier running around in his head, not when they've got a real one. They don't need a little bit of hyena when they've got a wolf, and they don't need somebody to go out for donuts. Dawn has a real sweet tooth, and if she makes the run, she gets first pick. But here, they didn't have anybody to do any of that, and Wesley's not nearly as good at driving Cordy crazy as I am. 

And then there's that space. I don't know why I'm in the middle, like I said. It should be Spike, because we both love him like bibbling idiots. Maybe they both like having somebody warm next to them, for however long that lasts, before we call Willow for that spell. Maybe I make it easier for Angel to never cross that line again, by helping Spike do nasty things to his mousse cans, drawing cartoons in the margins of his dirty Victorian pictures, watching Dangermouse at eight in the morning when he's trying to get to sleep. Pissing him off just enough to keep us all safe. Hmm. Possibly Angel can't exist without my cooking; kind of unlikely, but I did get him to eat a fluffernutter sandwich last week. Or maybe Spike just likes having to put his leg over me to kick Angel out of bed at twilight. All I know is I'm here. In the middle, between them, around them, under them sometimes, and it's the best damn place I've ever been. And I mean _including_ Baskin-Robbins.

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=directory-authorProfile&userid=97320
   [2]: http://www.jbx.com/~boethius/forged/1000dreams.html



End file.
